Friday, February 11, 2011

The new location is CAMDEN COUNTY, which is a major geographical error. While I took issue with the overbroad geographical labeling of Atlantic City 3: SOUTH JERSEY, at least Atlantic City is IN South Jersey. But more on that later - let's check out the new location.

CAMDEN COUNTY has the same structure as previous Atlantic City chapters: six jobs, with Bronze, Silver, Gold and Ruby levels for each. There's not much excitement on the way - just this icon as you finish each level:

Sadly, there is not any new job loot in CAMDEN COUNTY. The prior chapter - SOUTH JERSEY - had the Pickpocket, the Ground Hugger, and the Frilled Lizard - nothing with huge stats, but interesting because you could only get them in Atlantic City.

CAMDEN COUNTY also has those items as job loot, and some decent Las Vegas items - the Diamondback and Range Finder Rifle - but nothing top tier, and nothing you couldn't previously get in SOUTH JERSEY.

But the new "iPod" layout will probably cause Apple to sue Zynga for trademark infringement is pretty neat:

Come to think of it, if you DO play Mafia Wars: Atlantic City on your iPod, do you get confused because there is a button on the screen right above the button on your iPod??

Anyway, in addition to the one-stop shopping of collecting from all of your Properties that is the neatest feature of Atlantic City overall, SOUTH JERSEY offers you 24 Skill Points for completing the four levels - not a bad use of your Energy if you've completed Italy. The XP:Energy ratio is pretty low, but Atlantic City has never been about leveling.

The reward for completing SOUTH JERSEY is the Parkour Master, an Armor item with sub-type "Legs" (???) and very nice 105/121 stats.

Now for some geography ranting. Let's go back to the map of New Jersey that we analyzed in Atlantic City 3: SOUTH JERSEY:

Atlantic City is in...ATLANTIC County. Not Camden County. Using CAMDEN COUNTY as the name for a new Atlantic City location makes about as much sense as if Mafia Wars released Las Vegas Chapter 9: UTAH, or Moscow Episode 7: CHINA.

Here's something else totally irrelevant that irked me - once I accepted that the new location was called CAMDEN COUNTY (where I grew up, hence the hysteria), the names of the jobs were the next insult:

I don't think this is unique to New Jersey, but COUNTIES DON'T HAVE MAYORS. Cities do. So what mayor are we blackmailing? For that matter, what CITY Council are we stacking in a COUNTY?